This briefing looks at how participatory immersion techniques can be used to promote advocacy in policy planning, focussing specifically on gaining insight into the situation of the poor. Senior staff in aid agencies are involved in daily decisions about policy and practice which have direct impact on the lives of poor people. But in a rapidly changing world, how can they be sure that they are basing those decisions on up-to-date information about what poor people want and would consider to be most helpful? REALISE is a participatory approach to learning, whereby staff from policy institutions and donor agencies spend a few days living and working with host families in a poor community. This enables them to engage in critical self-reflection both on their own and in a facilitated group and can bring long-term benefits to the practice of development. The experience increases motivation and commitment and the personal contact ensures that poor peopleÆs voices and perspectives are heard and integrated into new policy approaches and practice at senior level.

This article outlines the overall approach to community based planning (CBP) in South Africa ( part of DFID funded action research project covering Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ghana, and South Africa) as well as some of the experiences of using CBP in Mangaug Municipality in South Africa, one of the early partners in the project. The article takes this further, describing this experience in some detail, as well as the lessons that have been learnt as CBP has been rolled out to eight municipalities during 2003-4. It explains participatory structures within municipalities focusing on the role of Ward Committees; the legal basis for participation; and CBP in the context of the planning system in South Africa. It goes on to describe the application of CBP grated development plans (IDPs) in Mangaug depicting the planning methodology and evaluating the initial results on ward committees, municipal integrated development plans and service provision. Community empowerment, ownership of the ward development agenda and processes, and shift towards local development initiatives in the municipal IDP, were some of the main initial results. The Mangaug project led to a national workshop held in 2002 where a national steering committee was established to scale up the experience. The elements in scaling up included the establishment a national coalition of government, donors, municipalities and service providers; developing methodological guidelines; piloting; training of facilitators; and securing resources. Emphasis was also put on strengthening the linkages between CBP and IDP. Finally some of the key lessons are summarised, together with comments by project facilitators and the future of the project.

Vietnam has set a course for political and economic change. Decentralisation has allowed individual provinces in Vietnam significant autonomy to interpret national laws and policy. These changes are opportunities to harness the legal framework for change into community-based planning and participation in natural resource management. The MOSAIC programme in Quang Nam province, central Vietnam, has adopted innovative planning tools at the local community level, such as participatory three-dimensional modelling (P3DM). In the P3DM method accurate 3-D models of a chosen area are manufactured and used as a source for discussion. MOSAIC is building experiences, lessons and partnerships to frame provincial policy for sustainable land-use planning. The programme is navigating the complex State administrative structure to magnify site-based results into wider-scale policy and planning at provincial, regional, and up to national levels. This article gives account of experiences from and the participatory methods used in the MOSAIC activities in Tabhing commune and Song Thanh nature reserve. It starts by giving a brief introduction to the situation in Quang Nam province, which is one of the poorest in Vietnam and dominated by ethnic minorities, and where open-access resource regimes are rapidly depleting local forests. It describes the processes of participatory planning and P3DM used in working with the Ka Tu people in the region, and evaluates lessons learned from the use of P3DM in community-based planning. It concluded that efforts to link landscape-level planning into micro-level conservation action has benefited from P3DM as a cost-effective learning, planning, and mediating tool.

A group of development analysts had a dialogue about labour market, trade and poverty issues in 2004. They preceded the dialogue with exposure to the realities of the lives of six women from the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in Gujarat, India. The struggles faced by these women provided the frame for the technical dialogue that followed. This is a compendium of personal and technical reflections of the analysts involved in the exercise. While the personal reflections focus on the experience of the participants, the technical reflections give an economic analysis of the situation of the women. The exercise was part of the Cornell-SEWA-WIEGO exposure and dialogue programme aimed at starting a dialogue between mainstream economists, SEWA activists, and WIEGO (Women) researchers around key assumptions of neo-classical economics and neo-liberal economic policies, which trouble ground level activists and researchers working on issues of employment and labour. This project is described in an appendix in this document. An epilogue examines the use of exposure methodology for dialogue and key issues.

This paper is about the practice and the potential of immersions. Immersions are occasions when professionals learn directly from encounters with poor and marginalised people by living with them and reflecting on the experience. Those taking part may be the staff of bilateral and multilateral agencies, diplomats, parliamentarians, government officials, NGO staff, academics, or other development professionals.|Aims were to:|describe types and purposes of immersions;|review practical experience with immersion design, logistical organisation and the host community;|assess the rationale and impact of immersions, including better awareness of the realites of poor and marginalised people, personal and institutional learning and change, reinvigorated commitment, and influence on decision-making and policy;|identify enabling conditions for making immersion experiences a normal, regular and expected activity for development professionals, together with good practices.|Authors' summary

In an article for the special 50th edition of PLA Notes, the author provides a case study of the work in participation, communication and change in Nigeria, in the context of Theatre For Development (TFD). The author looks at the use of the performance arts to facilitate collaborative development through the use of accessible communication strategies. The article explores the difficulty of communication, acknowledging the likely differences in perceptions, understandings and power relations of the participants involved, particularly when the aim is to promote change. The overall role of popular and collaborative communications in development is presented as about developing understanding and meanings of the phenomena that underpin our everyday lives. The article concludes by suggesting that the manner and structure of popular communication for change must therefore respond to the context in which the work is taking place; for it is determined by the nature of the society, community and target groups in which one is working.

This short article, in the tips for trainers section of the special 50th edition of PLA notes, looks at ways of using cameras to capitalise on the power of the photograph in the Reflect process. Reflect is a participatory approach to adult literacy, based with the international NGO ActionAid. The article looks at how photographs can provoke analysis, can be used for documentary purposes and can be used for advocacy. The article also briefly describes examples from Lesotho and Malawi.

This short article, in the tips for trainers section of the special 50th edition of PLA notes, describes a ranking line activity. This is an activity that can be used for determining local indicators of poverty and wealth, health, local environment etc. The activity involves people lining up (or placing markers on a line) in between extremes on a continuum, such as rich and poor. Ranking lines can be useful in starting off local needs assessments and health action plans, or to explore specific issues within a community.

These five briefings explain the Deliberative Mapping (DM) approach, which is designed to help specialists and members of the public weigh up evidence to reach a joint decision on a complex policy issue where there is no obvious way forward. The methodology can be applied to a problem to judge how well different courses of action perform according to a set of economic, social, ethical and scientific criteria. The aim is to use this approach as the basis for more robust, democratic and accountable decision making which better reflects public values. DM integrates two independent but complementary approaches to informing decision making: stakeholder decision analysis (SDA) which is a qualitative group based process; and Multi-Criteria Mapping (MCM) which is a quantitative, computer-assisted interview process. The first briefing, Opportunities and challenges for involving citizens in decision making, gives a background and a rationale for the approach and looks at current developments in citizen participation in governance. The second briefing The Deliberative Mapping approach, describes the technique. Briefing three, Deliberative Mapping in practice: the kidney gap, illustrates the application of DM to a case-study analysing the problem of kidney shortages, and summarises how participants appraised the various options for the way forward. Briefing four, Citizens' panels in Deliberative Mapping: a user guide, describes how citizens' panels are used in DM. It focuses on how to run them, and the issues that facilitators and researchers need to address to ensure that the panels work well. Briefing five, Using the Multi-Criteria Mapping (MCM) Technique, describes Multi-Criteria Mapping (MCM), and considers its role in helping individuals identify and explain their preferred ways forward on complex and uncertain problems.